


Far From Home

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [15]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Homesickness, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Magic, Reader-Insert, Stargazing, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23572033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: Sometimes you escape to the roof of the Tower to try to do a bit of stargazing in the light-polluted skies of New York. That’s where Loki finds you one night.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 10
Kudos: 265





	Far From Home

The lights were still too bright. Even now, when most of the world had been forced to shut down, there was still too much light pollution in the skies above New York for you to see any real stars. It wasn’t really surprising, but it was...disappointing. 

You’d sort of made a habit out of escaping to the roof of the Tower at night. It let you pretend to escape for a while. When you weren’t surrounded by television screens blaring news reports, it was easier to pretend that things were normal. The cool night air against your skin was also rather calming. It was hard to feel truly claustrophobic in a building as enormous as this, but...you were getting there. 

“Stark said I might find you out here.”

You flinched and tried to curl into something approaching a defensive pose, but it was difficult when you were stretched out on your back on the ground. You swore under your breath when you saw that it was only Loki. Of course it was. You could hear him laughing quietly as he came over and lowered himself to the ground beside you.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Maybe he didn’t mean to, but there was a certain note of smugness in his voice that told you he didn’t really mind having done it, either. 

“It’s fine,” you said, lifting your nose into the air to give your words a sense of haughtiness. “I guess it’s my fault for thinking I could let my guard down at home.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. Normally, you didn’t mind long silences, but something about this one… When you looked over at him, he met your eyes and gave a small nod. “Apologies.” He sounded contrite. You offered a smile and returned your attention back to the sky.

It was weird. You would have loved to simply lay there in silence, more or less ignoring his presence as you went back to trying to quiet your mind with the clouds that drifted in the sky, but you couldn’t. He felt like electricity. You wanted to twitch, to get to your feet, to try to do something else to entertain him so he could see you weren’t normally this boring. You never felt like this with other people.

Finally, the quiet got to be too much for you. “Were you looking for me? If Tony told you I’d be out here…?” You trailed off before you could say what you were really wondering: Surely Loki hadn’t come out here to be alone, if Tony had told him that you were probably already here.

“Thor sent me to find you. He wanted me to bring you inside so everyone could watch a movie together.” He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about that, and you laughed despite yourself. It had to be hard for Loki to constantly be surrounded by people—powerful people—who had once wanted him dead (and possibly still did). “I figured that, whatever you were doing out here, it had to be preferable to _that_.” Neither of you spoke again for several long moments. You kept your eyes fixed on the greyish sky, and told yourself that you were looking for shooting stars. Really you were just trying not to sit up and study Loki’s face. He laid back and folded his arms behind his head. “What _are_ you doing out here?”

“Stargazing.” The Look that Loki gave you made you laugh again. He didn’t have to say a word: something about the quirk of his eyebrow and the tilt of his head told you exactly what he was thinking. “I know. But it can be nice just to pretend, I guess. It lets me feel like I’m somewhere else for a while.”

For a while, he didn’t respond. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was thinking, though, and that realization made you wonder when, exactly, you’d managed to come to understand him so well. You spent a bit of time together—more time than anyone else ever really spent with him, except maybe Thor—and though he often roped you into hijinks that had the two of you tearing through the Tower while trying not to laugh too loudly, you also spent plenty of time just...reading together in the same room. 

“I did that,” he said, pulling you out of your own thoughts. “When I was younger. In Asgard.”

This seemed important—like a breakthrough or something. He wasn’t usually anywhere near this forthcoming when it came to stories from his childhood. You hummed thoughtfully, willing yourself not to show too much excitement over this. “But not here?”

His upper lip curled a bit and he shook his head. “The stars are wrong here. The skies are wrong. If you could see the stars of Asgard, I don’t know that you’d ever come back here.” He lifted his hand, but then dropped it to his side again and looked at you. “Can I show you?”

Some small part of you wanted to tease him about it, wanted to pretend to tell him not to show you, because it would only make you want the real thing, but there was something in his face that stilled your tongue. It was like he needed to do this? He was homesick. All he wanted was to see the stars of his home planet once more, and maybe he’d never really get that again. You licked your lips and nodded, not breaking eye contact with him.

He smiled and raised his hand again, and you felt that lovely little rush of energy around you that told you he was using his magic. But you couldn’t stop watching his face. His brows furrowed a bit as he regarded his work, likely using his keen eye to spot every little uncertainty or mistake so he could fix it. He was a perfectionist, you’d come to realize. He could be particular and demanding, but it was only because he wanted things to be perfect. You wanted to reach out and soothe that little crinkle between his eyebrows. You clenched your hands into fists to keep them still.

After a while, his face relaxed a bit, and his mouth even curled into a smile. It disappeared, however, when he turned his head and caught you looking at him. “You’re not even looking!” 

“Sorry! Sorry.” Rather than trying to explain yourself (‘Sorry, Loki, it’s just that I find your face so much more beautiful and charming to look at than any starry night sky could ever be...’), you turned away to refocus your attention on his work. Loki was using his illusion magic to blanket the night sky with stars: rich and bright and twinkling in a way that seemed at once brand new but also familiar. You were not much of an astronomer, but these stars did feel alien to you. There were shapes and clusters in Loki’s sky that you’d never seen before, not even in pictures from NASA. “It’s beautiful...”

Loki hummed his agreement. A shooting star streaked across his sky, and you reached out to point it out before you could remind yourself that he was the one who’d created it. But he didn’t make fun of you. Instead, a few more streaked past, one even dropping to circle around your extended finger before disappearing against your palm. 

“Do you have constellations? Or...stories? About the stars?” Maybe it was a silly question, given how advanced Asgardian society was. It was hard to imagine any of Loki’s ancestors ever gazing at the skies and seeing mythical creatures. He _was_ a mythical creature.

But you heard him nod, and when you turned to look at him once again, he was smiling at you. Maybe he knew what you were thinking. 

“That one there. Do you see the three stars and then the one a bit farther off?” He pointed towards a cluster of stars, and they glowed slightly brighter, as if he were pointing them out to you. “That was the first one my mother ever taught me to spot. The story goes...”

And he spent the rest of the night teaching you about the stars of his home. When you managed to gather enough courage to reach out to take his hand, he didn’t even pause in the middle of his story, but the stars seemed to glow a little bit brighter.


End file.
